


following suit and directions

by hardscrabble



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Gen, Inception Bingo, Rescue Missions, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:15:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25434502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardscrabble/pseuds/hardscrabble
Summary: Ariadne took a deep breath and let it out slowly, her first actual sign of anything like uncertainty, and twisted the key in the ignition.
Relationships: Ariadne & Arthur & Eames (Inception), Ariadne & Eames (Inception)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21
Collections: Inception Trope/Kink Bingo 2020





	following suit and directions

**Author's Note:**

> For Inceptiversary Trope Bingo 2020, prompt "Road Trip."

He could nearly forgive Dom Cobb the entire mess that had been the Fischer job, for two things alone: finding Ariadne, and in the process, not losing Ariadne. “Nearly” doing a great deal of work, there; he’d never have considered working with Cobb again, so it was just as well he’d retired. Eames still sent cards and presents at the right times, dropped in whenever he was nearby for jobs, because Lord knew Philippa and James had been through enough, and what was another uncle-type in the grand scheme of things?

On the other side of the door, the bell was fading under a tumble of steps and several locks clicking.

He only saw the one, so well done her.

The door squeaked open to reveal a young woman wearing a floral button-down and denims, barefoot, hair loose. And, of course, looking at him in that way only Ariadne had, just through her eyelashes, level and calm no matter what was swirling through her head, and saying, “Arthur?”

“Arthur,” he replied, because _No, love, I’m Eames, remember?_ would only waste time.

“Ready in thirty,” Ariadne said, pushing the door open wider with her foot. “Bathroom first to the left, kitchen down the hall.”

He didn’t need anything but to stay out of her way, so he moved past her. “I’ll cover petrol,” he said over his shoulder as he passed a little lounge room.

“You’ll cover food and rooms,” countered Ariadne, catching herself on the edge of the doorjamb just past the lounge. She raised her eyebrows until Eames nodded, and then launched herself into her room. More loudly, “I have better excuses for gas. You have more IDs for incidentals.”

He didn’t bother to ask how she knew the bit about IDs. Ariadne had ways, honed during the three years since Fischer. They’d worked a few jobs, small ones, Eames extracting and Ariadne building and Arthur as point, and each time Ariadne _knew_ more. Then another few jobs with other points, nowhere near as good, once…

Well.

Eames slung his own duffel bag onto the floor of her flat’s little galley kitchen and gazed out the back window. The view wasn’t much, just the shared yard of her block of flats, but there were some dandelions, and it was a nice day. He heard Ariadne rustling around in her room, opening drawers and zips.

It hadn’t been absolutely certain that she’d be free, but his contacts had told him her most recent job had wrapped last week, so the chance had seemed worth it.

Besides, there weren’t many others he could go to.

Fifteen minutes later, Ariadne came into the kitchen, wearing a backpack and dropping her weekender and keys on the counter. She’d swapped the button-down for a T-shirt splashed with someone’s logo of a shark, bundled her hair at the back of her neck, and put on sturdy-looking boots. As she went to a cabinet for a couple water bottles, then the sink, she said, “He’s definitely not anywhere else.” She didn’t ask questions anymore, just said what she knew, however she’d found it out.

Eames sighed. “Contacts every part of the world. Not a whisper. When that one goes to ground, he stays gone.”

“So we’re going after. Based on…” Ariadne looked over at him as she screwed the cap onto one of the bottles.

“I do know him fairly well,” Eames said, and heard the edge in his own voice; Ariadne glanced over again, a little sharp, and he cleared his throat. “Some sites I think only I’m privy to. Patterns. Hints from over the years.”

Ariadne shook her head, capping the second bottle. “If it were anyone but you.”

“It’s mental,” Eames said quickly, knowing _you_ was plural— _you and him_. “I know. Sounds even worse than it is. But I think—”

“Anyone but you,” she repeated, and handed him the second bottle of water. “Let’s go.”

Eames hesitated as he stood. “You’ve nothing else to do ’round here? We don’t know how long we’ll be.”

“I’ll call a friend from the road,” Ariadne said as she picked up her keys from the counter. Her tone said there was nothing else to say, so Eames followed her down to the little cellar where the laundry was and out the bulkhead into the yard. Ariadne lifted a cinderblock, reached into the hollow of another, and pulled out a heavy chain. She looped it through the bulkhead handles, doubling it over itself in the front, and secured it with three different padlocks.

“Your friend’s going to manage all that?” Eames asked as they set off to the end of the block of flats.

Ariadne rolled her eyes. “Don’t ask questions I don’t want answered,” she replied, intonation so much like Arthur’s it made him blink.

The car was a station wagon, navy blue. Ariadne popped the trunk and set her bag down, then gestured for him to follow, smirking with a little half-bow.

He put his water bottle in one of the cupholders on the front console as she asked, “Where we headed?”

“West. Ish.”

Ariadne took a deep breath and let it out slowly, her first actual sign of anything like uncertainty, and twisted the key in the ignition. “Get this show on the road,” she muttered, “pun intended.”

And they were off.

Ariadne leaned against the wall and watched Eames pace. The second room of the basement had a bedframe with a bare mattress and a dresser of neutral boring clothes in four different sizes; it was clean, dry, and cool, although the paint on the wall behind her was chipped in spots. They’d come into the shack, which looked near collapse, through a triple-locked door and found the rest of the place equally barren. In the first room of the basement—down a trapdoor she’d never have noticed—a refrigerator stood unplugged with the door propped open. Cabinets barren. Folding chair, just one, leaning against a closet wall.

It was the third place they’d looked.

Eames stopped at the far wall and turned. “That’s it around this latitude,” he said, voice tight, “until we hit the Mississippi. North or south? Your pick.”

“South,” she replied, on the rationale that getting the southern places done before summer really hit would help both their tempers. “But we’re stopping for the night now.” She felt pretty done after hours of driving, even with three breaks to change plates and four real stops. Plus, Eames was wearing thin. Thinner. He’d looked frayed already on her front step that morning.

Now, he pulled in a silent breath and let it out in a gusty sigh. “Reckon you’ve got the right of it.”

They didn’t talk on their walk back to the car. It wasn’t anywhere near sunset, but the day felt old and quiet, and she felt a little worn herself. In the car, she asked Eames to look up spots to stay, places to eat, and he read the few directions necessary out loud.

Dinner was near-silent except for the news channel on the TV in the diner. She only paid attention to the baseball scores; everything else seemed irrelevant. Because, well, Arthur.

They had a couple options for the night and picked the crappier one, because it would involve less public interaction. A motel, where the clerk handed over a key for one room with a double bed. Posing as a couple would help scramble their trail, if anyone was on it. Which seemed unlikely, but so had inception.

“I’ll take the floor,” Eames said in a low voice as they left the clerk’s desk.

Ariadne didn’t bother rolling her eyes. “We’ll share the bed,” she said. “Don’t be noble.”

“I’d never,” he murmured, but he didn’t actually object.

The room was chilly with air conditioning, and after she showered—which Eames insisted she do first—Ariadne got right in the bed with her book. Eames put his trousers back on after his own shower and disappeared for a walk.

She closed her book. It was fine, one of those glossy literary bricks that had collected handfuls of awards when it was published three years ago, but she couldn’t focus. Well, Arthur. Looking for Arthur, after he’d fallen off the face of the earth. That in itself, the falling, wasn’t a big concern. Ariadne herself had had a couple jobs go bad and pulled her own disappearing acts. But _she_ had come back.

Arthur hadn’t.

The global dreamshare crew had more cliques than your average American high school, all of them interconnected by residual allegiances and grudges and favors owed. Many of them knew Arthur; all knew of him. About twenty percent would kill for him; about five percent would prefer him killed.

The thing was that, if he’d been killed, dreamshare would have boiled over into war. His killers would have crowed, his defenders would have exacted revenge, that revenge would have affected a third party, the third party would have acted against either enemy or ally or both. The thought of losing Arthur like that had been in the back of Ariadne’s head since her second job, once she had a better handle on the scope of this entire thing, and she’d sort of made her peace with it. Obviously his death would be horrible, unbearable, but if it were related to the business it would… make sense.

What didn’t make sense was losing Arthur without a word.

She had her own webs of intel now, and not a single one ever yielded an iota about Arthur, not for all that time. And then Eames had arrived at her door without a call, and she couldn’t even be surprised.

The door clicked, a key in the lock, and she barely heard it, barely registered anything until Eames said, “Book’s that bad, then?”

She blinked and realized what she’d been doing: holding the novel closed, one finger marking her page, and glaring at the opposite wall. Tension had built in her jaw; she stretched it out now, not quite a yawn. “Book’s fine,” she said. “Just… thinking.”

“About—no. Three guesses, first two don’t count?”

That made her smile a little. “Got me. How was the walk?”

“Quite interesting. I’ve made the discovery that—” Eames spread his arms wide— “we are in the middle of absolutely bloody nowhere.”

“Figured that was the point,” she said. “He’s not going to be in some metropolis.”

“Which is like him, isn’t it. Makes things bloody difficult.” He was digging around in his duffel bag, finally coming up with sleep pants. “So best rest up, hadn’t we.”

“That’s not your worst idea.”

He threw her two fingers, which she probably deserved, and went into the bathroom to change. When he emerged, he said, “You’re certain I shouldn’t—”

“What did I say about nobility?” Ariadne demanded. Eames smiled ruefully and got under the covers.

Ariadne put her book on the nightstand, flicked the light off, and went a whole four minutes curled to face the wall before she gave up. She could feel Eames’s unnatural stillness, like he was holding himself stiff. When she twisted to look at him, the faint light from the gap in the curtains gleamed off his eyes; his gaze moved over the ceiling like he was scanning for bugs.

She turned to face him and dropped her hand on his arm. “We’re going to find him.” She’d said something like that to Eames—and Cobb, okay—on her first job, but it had been about Fischer, and she hardly intended to kick Arthur off a skyscraper once they found him. Granted, she hadn’t known she was going to do that to Fischer until they found him, but that had been an improvisation. Not a systematic search. Besides, Arthur wouldn’t be anywhere near a skyscraper.

The silence had stretched for too long. Ariadne patted Eames’s arm twice and said, “We will.”

Eames sighed, but the tension went out of him; he reached to press his hand against the back of hers. “Might just,” he muttered.

It went on like the first day. Breakfasts on the road, coffee and pastries or those horridly addictive greasy egg sandwiches. Three or four spots over a few hundred miles. Fast-food lunches, although Eames insisted on places that at least served things resembling fresh vegetables, because Ariadne could and would cheerfully subsist on chips alone if you didn’t watch her. Dinners at little places with linoleum floors and televisions tuned to news networks, where Ariadne would get him back by throwing meaningful looks at his plate, because Eames lost more of his appetite with each check-off on his mental list. Then motels, single rooms because that suggested a couple, which wasn’t what they were, not that it made much difference.

They blurred together, the days and the pair of them, picking up each other’s moods and tweaking the radio to suit, ordering each other’s meals without consultation. The days passed quietly but for the radio and the road noise, footsteps on concrete or through underbrush or over wooden porches. They never damaged the security, never brought out the bolt cutters Eames had in the glove compartment. They rarely spoke once they were inside, only swept the rooms. Each place clearly untouched—food caches fully stocked, shelves empty, generators cold.

As the miles accumulated behind them, as the nights grew shorter, they stopped keeping distance, slept piled on each other.

She didn’t know how many days it had been when Ariadne realized she couldn’t remember the last time she’d reassured him. It would only emphasize it now, if she started again, and besides, she wouldn’t mean it, and she didn’t really think she could sound like she did.

Hope felt like something from a thousand miles ago.

As they paced another bare room, shoulders brushing, Eames found he’d lost count. Which didn’t quite matter; what mattered was that it was empty. Another X on the mental list, regardless of having lost his place. On to the next.

Always on to the next, Ariadne pragmatic and cool, balancing Eames’s frustration, leading the way back to the car. No rush.

Why would they rush?

He twisted the radio dial; it caught static. A news report, briefly, and something like a numbers station, and a vague chord progression.

She finally lifted one hand from the wheel and tapped his fingers sharply, then smacked the radio off. “We don’t need that.” The line between her brows told him not to argue.

The road wound along the side of a mountain; it was a wide ribbon of asphalt, with a good shoulder between them and the barrier that separated the road from empty air. The white line to his right was the only marker. He couldn’t help but be a little glad she was still driving.

There was a beach at the foot of the mountain, a few switchbacks and several hundred meters down. “Are we going to the coast?” It might be nice. The sky was clear aquamarine, horizon to zenith.

“Might as well,” she replied, and her forehead smoothed. That was good, he thought.

On the next straightaway, he tried the radio. Static, static, static. A voice, saying, “We don’t have time.” Static. She frowned. “See if you can catch that voice,” she said, as they passed a road sign warning about sharp turns.

“Why?” he asked.

She shrugged, both hands on the wheel again as she braked and guided them smoothly along a hairpin. “Thought it sounded familiar.”

“Did it?”

“Can’t think of who. But it did.” She might have been able to put more thought into it if she weren’t focused on the turns. The shoulder had narrowed; she knew her own driving skill, but no one could navigate a stretch like this without a few nerves. Well, maybe one could, but that was a nonstarter. _Wait, why is—_

Right. Focus on the turns.

He worked on the dial, but there was only—well, _there_ was something like music, experimental-sounding, a low drone of a note. But not a voice. The buzz of static. A phrase—“not yet—” but too fuzzed out to discern the tone. Static, static, static… The light was going rapidly; he had to squint to track the little tick-mark on the dial.

The car stopped where the asphalt melted into sand. “Come on,” she said, but she left the keys in the ignition. You never knew, right.

The sky seemed greenish, billowing with cloud—wasn’t it clear just now?—but a walk sounded nice to him. “Oh, look.” Far off over the grey sand, a figure—just a speck, for now.

“Who’d be out here?” she asked. And almost answered herself, but the name disappeared.

“Never know,” he replied. “Might as well find out, hadn’t we?” The clouds were reversing through a bruise cycle, greenish going to deep blue to purple to something like graphite.

“Might as well,” she answered.

The sand was odd, she thought. No tide line, unless it was back on the mountain itself, but there were trees over by the car. Not that she could identify them. They just looked like trees in the fading light, grey trunks, the branches thrashing wildly, colors swapping from glossy darker green to the bright undersides. The wind wasn’t that high, but she supposed trees were sensitive. “Should have gotten the umbrella,” she commented.

“Not if there’s lightning. Oh, look.”

The speck of a figure was clearer now, someone running toward them.

“Well, he’s happy to see us, in any case.”

“Of course he is,” she answered, and froze.

He only took another step before he whipped around, eyes huge. “How long was he missing?” he demanded. “When I came to you. How long—”

She shook her head as the wind dragged at her hair; he’d gone sharp and jerky with panic, but she felt like she was moving through syrup, lifting her hand at half-speed to rake her hair away from her eyes. “I don’t…”

“It stopped meaning,” he said, and he turned to see—yes, the dark hair of the man approaching, his shirt with the collar unbuttoned and the sleeves rolled.

She forced herself to suck in a breath—there was water on the wind. “The job,” she sighed out, still feeling stuck, the blood in her veins viscid, thoughts shorting out halfway through formation. “Eames. We were finding the, the kidnapped—”

The kick. He remembered the kick, a shockwave through the foundation of the second level. Not his, and not Ariadne’s; hell if he knew who’d held it, but they—they’d had a lead, they’d fallen out of touch, and fallen— “Come on,” he said, and grabbed Ariadne’s arm. She grabbed back, curling her hand up his wrist, and they both began to run.

The hotel suite was nice, two beds and a couch, and Arthur was halfway to the couch before Ariadne said, “Hey, no. Don’t be noble.”

He turned. Ariadne was sitting at the foot of the bed closer to the window, still too pale by far. Eames leaned against the wall; he hadn’t put down his poker chip since Arthur had checked them all in. “It’d be—a help,” Eames said, when Arthur glanced at him, and the smile that flickered across his face looked more like a spasm.

“Of course,” Arthur said, more gently than he let himself get with anyone but them.

They slept in a pile, Ariadne’s head on his chest and Eames’s legs tangled with his. _They_ slept, anyway. Arthur watched the ceiling, quiet, fingers in Ariadne’s hair and on Eames’s back, and thought, again and again, _I’m right here. I’m right here._

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! comments much, much appreciated. I'm on tumblr as [valhecka](http://valhecka.tumblr.com) if you'd like to say hi!
> 
> title from stone sour's 2006 track zzyzx rd.


End file.
